Former Big Brother contestant Melanie Hill has said that the hit show "wasn't reality TV, but a dramatisation".

Ms Hill told Guardian Unlimited Radio that she was "horrified" when she saw the press coverage of the TV phenomenon after emerging from the house.

And she slammed the production team for portraying her as a "man eater".

She criticised both the show's producers and tabloid journalists for creating "caricatures" based on the contestants in the UK's first big taste of reality TV.

"When I watched the tapes I understood that stories and storylines were made to fit any piece of footage into the storyboard and or the caricature that we were portrayed or playing."

Ms Hill said she felt "naive" and "stupid" after she realised the way the production team, from independent producer Bazal, had manipulated the real lives of the participants to fit their storylines.

"It was foolish of me to think that they would give a fair portrayal of every single person," she said. "In fact we were so boring that they had to find stories that weren't happening".

Asked about the second series of the programme, Ms Hill said she thought it would attract "more interesting" people than the first series.

She said that of all the Big Brother contestants, "Nasty" Nick Bateman had made "by far the most money".

But she said he was the only one who had joined to make money. "The reasons people went on to the show were very wide and broad," she said, adding that Mr Bateman, who had a link-up with the Sun, was the only one who used it to launch his career.

Ms Hill will be returning to TV screens in March next year to present Chained, a reality show on the new Channel 4 digital channel E4.

She also hopes to get involved with travel programmes and travel writing.